


Stand Face To Face With Your God

by coldfiredragon



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Boys In Love, Canon Gay Relationship, F/F, Henry Pov, Henry centric, M/M, Memory Alteration, Post Season 3, no monster, queliot, wickoff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 09:31:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldfiredragon/pseuds/coldfiredragon
Summary: Three months after Henry helped the Library mind-wipe his students Henry checks on some of them for the first time, and realizes that some bonds are almost impossible to break, and some things never change.-Welters Challenge- 'Gods and Monsters'





	Stand Face To Face With Your God

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to 'The Invisible Threads that Bind Us Together' but you don't have to read that to read this. 
> 
> Title came from the lyrics of the Highly Suspect song 'My Name is Human'
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, it had a lot of layers to process. Happy reading!

There was never going to be enough magic. It was the hard truth that Henry had learned in the first month of the library's new rationing system. He had believed that the role he had played in helping them place their siphon would net Brakebills some sort of preferential treatment, but he'd been mistaken. The school, and by extension his students had become victims of the complex bureaucracy he had helped birth. 

At first he had been elated simply to see his students return, to see Brakebills flourish, but as quickly as the ranks had swollen, they had slowly started to shrink. The first lost students had been Quentin and his friends. The Library had claimed Alice, while the other seven had been memory wiped and swept off to new identities. Henry was almost relieved to see them go. They were alive, more importantly, they were safe. After forty time-loops he'd never dreamed that all of them would make it through of the Beast nightmare intact. Henry wasn't blind to the scars they had weathered, thanks to Julia he wasn't blind to much of anything save his own foolishness. In his worst moments, he mourned the return of his eyesight and the way he had repaid Julia's boundless kindness with cruelty. 

Henry stared at the empty whiskey tumbler sitting on his desk. He had hoped that being an active dean again would lead to an end of his substance abuse. Jane Chatwin and her infernal watch were behind him. He'd expected to find solace in educating, but it was impossible to teach when magic burned out mid-spell. He loathed the disappointment he saw on the faces of young magicians desperate to learn; everyone was growing frustrated. Quentin and his friends had been the first students Brakebills had lost, but they hadn't been the last. His most ambitious students were looking for loopholes and finding them in the arms of monsters. In the last month, a pair of second years had made a pact with a vampire, a trio of third-years had embraced lycanthropy; just last week a first year had tried a summoning, and her roommate had found her corpse. The elite number who could call themselves Magicians was shrinking, and the ranks of the supernatural were growing. His students were abandoning their humanity en mass for the freedom they hoped to reclaim. Henry wondered if Zelda, with all her books and predetermined futures, had seen this outcome on the horizon. 

He refilled the tumbler and stared into the amber fluid. Per his agreement with the library, he was supposed to be making periodic checks on Quentin and the others. So far he hadn't found the time, or the spare magic, to meet the obligation. It had been almost three months since their memories had been wiped, and the start of a new month meant the start of the newest magical allotment. It was the best time to check on them if there was one, but Henry dreaded it. Looking them in the eye and not being recognized had been hard enough the first day when the urgency to get them established in their new identities had been at its peak. What if, in trying to save them, he had failed them? 

With a sigh he finished the whiskey and began to prepare a locator spell. The portal he opened took him to Manhattan, a packed bar, and Julia. It seemed appropriate to check on her first. He owed her so much. It was happy hour, and he found the young woman at a table with a group of co-workers. Watching her laugh, watching her smile, reminded him of a girl he'd always held a soft spot for due to her curiosity. Knowledge students were rare, and she had been a star pupil through thirty-nine time-loops. Of the eight she had been his favorite. Jane's decision to cast her out in timeline forty had broken his heart. She had deserved better than what hedge witches, free traders, and Reynard had given her. Maybe those challenges had made her stronger. Henry doubted she would have so elegantly transcended her humanity under his watch. Witnessing her powers exponentially grow in the absence of magic had astounded him, but the quest had drug her right back down into the dirt. Maybe she was cursed, maybe all eight of them were cursed. 

At the very least she was flourishing in her new life. Henry could add at least one chalk line to his win column. To see his former students succeed in lives blind to magic had been his one small wish. The library had been adamant that none of them be given access to their powers, new identities had been the only way to keep them from railing against a system hell-bent on excluding them. Henry brought the drink he had purchased to his lips and finished it in preparation to leave, then out of the corner of his eye he spotted Kady; for a moment he panicked. 

“Amanda! Over here!” Julia's, Samantha's, thrilled shout rang in his ears, and he watched the two young women first hug, then share a kiss. He was stunned that they had found one another, equally surprised that they appeared to be dating. They sat down side by side, apparently comfortable enough in the company of Julia's friends to openly display their intimacy. He wondered how in the blazes they had met, in a city of millions it should have been impossible. Henry wondered if his haste was to blame; he hadn't been given much time to plot their futures. Perhaps he'd unintentionally overlapped. 

Kady, 'Amanda', walked to the bar, and stood almost elbow to elbow with him. Their gazes met for the briefest of seconds, but recognition eluded her, or maybe she was that good of an actress. The bartender stopped to take her order, and Henry listened as she requested drinks, producing both 'Samantha's' ID and her own when prompted. She stood by his chair for almost five minutes, and never once did she give him a curious sideways glance. Henry decided he wouldn't tell the Library about them unless a future check indicated that their memories were returning. He would have to pay closer attention. A twenty dollar bill got left on the bar when he decided to leave. 

His next portal took him to one of Brooklyn's bustling shopping districts. He'd come looking for Eliot, and the young man's height and loose curls should make him easy enough to spot. Of the seven who had lost their memories, Henry believed that maybe Eliot deserved the fresh start the most. His natural telekinesis had brought him so much pain over the years. It had felt right, somehow, to lift all that pain off his shoulders, another win in a growing sea of losses. 

After witnessing Julia and Kady it shouldn't have been a shock to see Quentin with Eliot. The two had been thick as thieves in every time-loop, best friends in all, lovers in many, and an endless source of frustration to one Jane Chatwin. For some reason, the red-head had objected to their sexual relationship. There were days when Henry wondered how far past the death of her brother Jane had planned. She seemed the type to try and write the future, at least where Fillory was concerned, according to her own whims. The watch had made her something less than human in many ways; it had made her cold. Henry had often mulled the idea that the watch's ability to manipulate time had given her a false sense of divinity. She had been a dear friend in numerous respects, but her death had brought an end to the dreaded time-loop resets. Henry's hand formed a fist at his side – what he wouldn't give for one more reset now. 

Ahead of him Eliot and Quentin weaved through the crowd with the practiced ease of life-long New Yorkers. Henry took a moment to cast a charm to keep himself from being noticed as she shadowed the pair through the shopping district. The longer he followed them, the more he felt envy build in his gut. Of the seven Quentin was honestly the one he wouldn't mind never seeing again. The boy's recklessness had cost magicians everything they held dear. With the help of his friends, the order of human magic had been turned on its ear. Yet, despite everything he'd wrecked Quentin as 'Brian' now stood a few paces ahead of him, oblivious to his own chaotic nature, quietly overjoyed to be tucked against the side of the young man he loved without fully understanding why. Eliot now 'Adam' looked equally happy to have him there. 

Henry suddenly found himself furious at all of them, jealous of the apparently unbreakable bonds that forty time-loops had built. He should have dumped each of them in a different city, on different continents, as far apart as possible with no hope of unification. In trying to protect them he'd made them blind to the world they had helped create, and now he wrestled with the naivety he'd given them. He fervently wished he could find his own solace, just as they had, but if they were somehow cursed than so was he. He was hexed to be the one who remembered, even during the loops he'd been the one who stood witness to each rewritten world. 

The pair found a wine shop, and Henry followed them inside. The quiet hush of the store let him hear bits of their conversation, their quiet lighthearted laughs, their endeared tones. They were parts of one whole reunited, and wasn't that the goal of every person on the planet? To find a place that was familiar, where one felt safe, comfortable, and above all else wanted? 

With a heavy heart Henry realized that his former students who had pushed at the edges until the found the holes weren't monsters. They were lost and seeking the familiar comfort that magic had brought them. The only monster was the one he had let himself become when he'd sided with the library. Across the store, he watched as Quentin and Eliot paid, then weaved through the store arm-in-arm. Henry watched through the shop window as Eliot's hand curved around Quentin's neck and Quentin leaned up to kiss him. Shame overwhelmed the envy, after forty time-loops the pair deserved the happiness they had found; through trial by fire they had earned their new lives, and Henry was going to use every spare scrap of magic he could tear from the library to protect them. He was done abandoning his students, who else did they have to fight for them if not him.

**Author's Note:**

> Love wins! Comments and kudos are love, I would really appreciate your comments on Henry's thought process.


End file.
